UTEP men's basketball: Miners top Tulane in 1st C-USA game

UTEP guards Jacques Street (11) and McKEnzie Moore (13) talk during a timeout against Tulane in the second half of their NCAA college basketball game, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013, in New Orleans. UTEP won 66-57. (AP Photo/Tyler Kaufman)

The Miners zipped away to a 17-6 lead and never trailed, taking a 66-57 win over Tulane on Wednesday night in Devlin Fieldhouse in New Orleans.

UTEP, now 7-6 on the season and 1-0 in conference play, used a smaller lineup all evening against the athletic Green Wave and it paid dividends. Konner Tucker led UTEP in scoring with 14 points, draining four 3-pointers and making both his free-throw tries. Julian Washburn had 12 points, but excelled far more on the other end of the floor. Washburn played all 40 minutes and held Tulane's Josh Davis to just nine points. Davis came into the game leading Conference USA in scoring, averaging 18.1 points a game. It was the first time Davis has been held under double-figure scoring all season.

REPORTER

Bill Knight

Point guard Jacques Streeter had 10 points, six assists and just two turnovers. McKenzie Moore had nine points, nine rebounds, four assists and no turnovers. And Cedrick Lang added eight points, scoring four buckets on pick-and-roll plays.

"We got off to a great start," UTEP coach Tim Floyd said. "We made three threes in the first 10 minutes of the ball game. We kind of got our heads up. Defensively, we did a terrific job. The entire plan that we had defensively was Phil Johnson's alone, all night long. I thought we guarded really well against a team that's going to finish in the top three or four in our league. Julian Washburn did a marvelous job on Josh Davis -- just a terrific, terrific job. We did a terrific job on (Jordan) Callahan with Konner Tucker. I'm really proud of the effort that he gave. I thought McKenzie Moore came out in the second half and defended Kendall Timmons very well."

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Tucker said, "Starting out conference, we knew everything was going to get turned up a notch. We just wanted to come in here and execute and guard them on the defensive end. We knew that they were really good offensively. I think we got off to a pretty good lead. Throughout the game, we had a pretty good lead. We knew they were going to make a run at the end of the game. We just had to withstand the run. I think we did a good job of that. We knocked down some free throws, guarded them on the other end and we were fortunate to get the win."

UTEP got off to its fast start, but the Green Wave hardly went gently into the Gulf Coast night. Tulane cut UTEP's lead to just two, 28-26, at halftime. But UTEP came out in the second half on a 15-5 run, stretching the lead to 46-31 when Tucker hit a 3-ball with 12:45 to go.

Tulane, now 12-4 and 0-1, was not done just yet, though.

The Green Wave cut the Miner lead to five on a trio of occasions down the stretch -- 56-51, 58-53 and 60-55. But freshman Chris Washburn sank two free throws with 34.8 seconds left, Tucker drained two free throws with 24.4 seconds left and Moore dropped home two freebies with 11 seconds to go and that was that.

The Miners held Tulane to just 33 percent shooting, working in a tough man-to-man defense all evening. UTEP outrebounded Tulane 38-33. Tulane came into this game with a plus 7.3 rebounding margin, ranking 31st in the nation.

Bill Knight may be reached at bknight@elpasotimes.com; 546-6171. Follow him on Twitter @BillKnightept